Directors' Cup - Film Analysis: Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August (1974) by Lina Wertmüller
silly “important” note aside
This is a feminist masterpiece, I even wrote on it in a gender studies class; avoid the remake at all costs, the biggest strength and weakness of it is Madonna (if only Sally Potter had directed instead of Guy Richie)
Maybe this should be in the Director’s Cup section? It fell off the main page so fast I thought it had been deleted due to some strange conspiracy against Dimitris.
I just watched this last night and am still trying to put my thoughts together. Would be nice to see a bit of discussion here before that.
I will put a link on the main discussion thread which should make it easier to find. No comments yet still I need to see this film by Wertmüller, but at least I haven’t seen the Madonna remake either.
I really enjoyed this one. I love how impassionate people get. The guy arguing with Rafaella on the boat early in the movie seemed like he was about to explode. It was so engaging. I’m surprised how people kept railing on about the same things, and yet I was still so interested in seeing them go off. I love the mix of so many contrasting moods in this film. It’s beautiful, crass, political, universal, obvious, surprising, hilarious, tragic, frightening, calming, erotic, repulsive. The Italians seem to be able to mix these extremes well.
Wow, can you say ‘marginalized’?
OK, I shouldn’t gripe at the lack of discussion here, when I didn’t bother participating myself. But, I’ve gotta write something about this tonight and it would have been nice to see some other opinions.
What’s this up against anyway?
..Oh, the dog beating movie? Hmmm…willpower and a school uniform fetish kept me through to the end of that film, but Swept Away seems to have stuck with me more. Were any animals harmed in the making of it?
A film as entertaining as it is insightful. I can only imagine what a stripped down waste of time the remake was.
I love me some Mariangela.
House of Leaves
Posted on behalf of the film’s manager, Dimitris.
The battle of the sexes is not something unprecedented in the art of role-playing, of jealously, of provocation scattered in various film attempts from screwball comedies up to immature romantic comedies. So what is Wertmuller’s offering that’s so subversive in that it reaches beyond the erotic paradox of affairs?
Melato as Rafaella and Giannini as Gennarino act as two completely different people in class and in beliefs, she being an evil bourgeois on vacation and he being an uncouth Communist sailor in the cruise. After having been dejected by the snarl, social contempt and arrogant idiosyncrasies of her behavior, Gennarino feels that vengeance will eventually arrive. The dramatic change appears when they’re stranded in the middle of the ocean with a broken boat, probably an unlucky occurrence since Gennarino had agreed to accompany Rafaella for an evening bath. From the moment they arrive on the deserted island and on, the coexistence between them will bring a new weight to the film. The sailor will physically and psychologically torture his (former) boss where she in turn will subordinate to values that come to a rupture in relation to her marital and cosmopolitan life.
Wertmuller has already created up to the ocean sequences a shattered image of Italian luxury, echoing the classic pattern of rivalry between classes and the never-ending sexual clash. It is obvious that the conservative values of Rafaella contradict her feminist spirit which pervades through the film’s course despite the “torture” that she’ll endure. Gennarino on the other hand like a good family man is mainly interested for a rather free-time instead of working for a living, hence this particular emotion will collide with his leftist beliefs. A latent communist in other words where the revelation of his even worse medieval notions that women should be subordinate to males doesn’t improve the quality of his character more than the anguish and complaints of his rich boss, which will give greater impetus to a perverse humiliation. What kind of perversion however, since it doesn’t have a leading role in the film? The often dense Wertmuller wants to reveal it to us, especially in her close-ups into the heroes’ facial expressions and most poignantly when the political contradictions disappear if only for a moment, where that mutual perversity will be born from the erotic vertigo on that “exotic” island.
Enchantment and passion as the only refined features. Gennarino will become tyrant of the island, Rafaella will acquire an attitude of timidity and servitude. The type of sadomasochist love and of illusionary desires, in that Gennarino will order her to kiss his hand, to acknowledge the debauchery of the wealthy class and the government’s incapacity; he will practically blame her about anything he could never openly protest against, side by side with the masses. Rafaella will fall into his arms, intoxicated by the alteration of social rules. Thus, his chauvinism and filthiness exceed the conventional boundaries and the reference to Stalin at the beginning of the film is evident in his personality, since Stalin was an uneducated brute who drastically twisted the communist theories in old-fashioned, totalitarian views.
Is there satire in this whole scenery? The island one can say affects the couple as a magical entity but the exoticism is not reflected on every single frame on the screen, rather its dream figure is altered by their whims and their primitive lust. Melato and Giannini perfectly tie in to their roles, they listen and breathe in spite of their egocentricism. Melato in particular possesses a melancholic fancy right next Rafaella, the female lead with her relentless personality, which is an opportunity for Wertmuller to mock the male stereotypes of southern Italy and in general, where males supposedly have the upper hand in political and social decisions amidst the urban and rural environments (an oblique reference to Sicilian men).
It is not surprising that the outcome of events isn’t what we naturally want it to be …. or is it? Delusions, hypocrisies and separate classes will remain the same unchanged labels, even when Gennarino will desperately try to woo his new love to no avail. The social contracts will not change simply because the habits will not change.
Important Note: Any negative comments about my films without any small paragraph criticizing them will not be accepted like the previous Directors’ Cup insults towards masterpieces of diversity. Any extra negative comments criticizing politics / history (without even knowing them) and using the words boring / pretentious will also be rejected as philistine and ignorant.